Digital.ai Agility Reviews

We were explaining how to set up the project itself, which describes the main use cases for Digital.ai Agility. This includes how to set up the workflow and how to manage and build a Kanban. I wanted to set up a Kanban, as I am a Kanban trainer. That is where my bias is towards Kanban. I was looking towards those capabilities where I can set a Kanban and get the team collaboration running, and how a full system can be set up.

When they demoed it, they showed it, and Digital.ai helped with those key queries regarding support for this type of setup. However, after that, I couldn't personally explore it, to be frank.

The solution is excellent for collaboration. From the agility point of view, they have very good sprint functionality, allowing you to set up sprints effectively. For Scrum teams, it is particularly good and easy to set up. With respect to sprints and getting metrics out, such as velocity and related measurements, the functionality is robust.

The Scrum boards are particularly effective. Based on my colleague's exploration and setup, I observed how easily the team was able to use it. The integration with that tool was particularly helpful.

My team is currently using this solution as our backlog management tool. We have both an on-prem version and a public cloud. We have some traditional software development teams that are using the on-prem version. For our cloud version, right now we have non-software teams that are experimenting using Agile.

My team has been using the information on flow throughput and really looking at the larger stories that seem to take a lot longer to get through. We've been focused on improving our flow by breaking down the work into smaller chunks, and we're seeing a better throughput by doing that.

Our client uses Agility in a highly defined way, but it's not flexible. That's what we brought to the table. We handled the transition and mapping to take data from Jira and define a mapping solution in Digital.ai then push that upstream through to Clarity. Then we map the data to terminology because the hierarchies are very different between safe and agile.

They're a siloed organization, but the C-suite executives don't care, and they're not going to change that. They're unwilling to change their software, but they want reports, so they brought us in to reconcile this and push the data that they need to file their financial and forecasting reports. 

Even though if, in the strictest methodology sense, it didn't make that much sense but from reporting it was able to push the data. You wouldn't normally mach, for instance, a feature to an epic. You wouldn't do that because they're not at all the same. Things like that. They took terminology from Jira and they mapped it through to Agility and then took from Agility and mapped it up to Clarity. Actually, that interface was done first, the Agility to Clarity.

Agility is highly flexible. It can do much more than what our client is doing with it. They use it in a defined way. Some at that company have a much broader knowledge of agile and SAFe, but they're given applications and a mandated way to work. We had to work within their parameters and provide an accurate transition so the data would be mapped and pushed through.

We are using this solution to do the following:

• Define portfolio epics. 
• Define strategic themes and link portfolio items to them.
• Create features under portfolio epics.
  
• Create enabler epics that encapsulate governance artifacts.
  
• Create value streams (operational and development).
• Associate portfolio items with value streams.
• Roll up features and users' stories and tasks to achieve portfolio items and value streams.
• Create teams and associate tasks with teams.
• Assign points to user stories.
• Assign hours to tasks.
• Calculate the velocity of the team showing how many points they can take on in each iteration.

Digital.ai Agility helped our organization define the Enterprise Value Streams. These value streams account for all the activities that contribute to the bottom line of the organization.

In the Digital.ai Agility tool, you can derive all user stories, features, and epics from the top-level portfolio items and value streams. Any work that is done must contribute to the value streams, otherwise, it should be questioned why that effort is being executed.

The Excel Release and Excel Deploy is part of the continuous delivery management stack and we use this to plan release automation. We also use it to standardize complex enterprise scale application deployments in complex environments, usually using virtual machines, containers and cloud infrastructure.

It has accelerated issue resolution and reduced lead times. It has helped to increase communication. From a high-level perspective, it has increased software delivery speed and reliability.

As an Agile coach, I have recommended the use of VersionOne to several clients. 

Being the Agile coach, I work with clients to help them install it into their local environment, then conduct an initial administration to the application. Afterward, I help them use it to manage their Scrum, Kanban, and SAFe implementations.

It allows my clients to have one central tool to manage their agile projects. It provides the necessary metrics for reporting. 

VersionOne delivers a total ALM solution for whether you are operating a single team, like Scrum and Kanban for IT operations, or implementing an agile enterprise approach, like SAFe.